I leave the house and start up the hill in the light fog, other, distant figures half-visible in front of me. I turn right to start the long-descent to the valley floor and the Station, pausing at the rate-limiting step of my journey to await a break in traffic. As I continue, I become aware of others, striding with greater purpose, ,perhaps they know something I don't? I speed up, tension building in my shins until I'm afraid they'll crack, shatter like trees in an Arctic frost - they don't.
At the station I look along the platform at my fellow commuters, grey in the gloaming, hunched like armadillos, against what - the cold, the impending Pendolino not stopping at Platform 2, the Damoclean doom of a full working-week?
The train arrives, I find a seat and look around at the sleepers, the readers, the caffeine-hungry and the just-plain hungry. We move off, cocooned in a warm oasis of gloom, the reassuring pressure of cushion on buttock giving us a pre-emptive superiority over those others, the less- fortunate, who will get on later and stand, teetering, into London. Is it worth the extra money, this seat? You betcha!
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